I - Information Systems

The members of Voltage, a new group in MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, want to interest more freshmen and Course 6 students in the field of Electrical Engineering (EE). Sponsored by MIT IEEE/ACM, the group is working to build a cohesive network for students in both the EE degree program (6-1) as well as for students leaning to EE in the EECS degree program (6-2) — offering support and resources in academics, research and careers. Read more.

Munther Dahleh, the William A. Coolidge Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, will head a new Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) to be launched on July 1. Offering a range of cross-disciplinary academic programs, including a new undergraduate minor in statistics, IDSS will be home to faculty from the Engineering Systems Division (ESD), the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems(LIDS), and the current Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC). Read more.

MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department Head Anantha Chandrakasan and Associate Department Heads Bill Freeman, Silvio Micali, and David Perreault announced in February 2015, the promotions of eight faculty members in the department. Professors Adalsteinsson, Daniel, Golland, and Torralba are promoted to full professor. Professors Chilpala, Polyanskiy and Vaikuntanathan are promoted to associate professor. The promotions are effective July 1, 2015. Read more.

Five members of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of a total of eight MIT faculty have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering including Hari Balakrishnan, Sangeeta Bhatia, Anantha Chandrakasan, L. Rafael Reif and Daniela Rus. Read more.

Vivienne Sze, core member of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL), principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) and the Emanuel E. Landsman (1958) Career Development Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (EECS), has received a 2014 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award (YFA). Read more.

Professor Muriel Medard working with EECS graduate student Flavio du Pin Calmon and researchers from Maynooth University in Ireland have shown that since existing practical cryptographic schemes demonstrate elements of information-theoretic security thereby preventing extraction of some of their data — it is possible to calculate minimum-security guarantees for any given encryption scheme — enabling information managers to make more informed decisions about how to protect data. Read more.

Using Bayesian regression, Devavrat Shah, member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (LIDS) and recent graduate student Kang Zhang have identified patterns from five months of price data from all major Bitcoin exhanges — enabling them to predict the price of Bitcoin — thereby allowing them to double their investment over a 50 day period. Read more.

Paying attention to the data that says MOOC learning is limited because of high drop rates and other negatives, CSAIL researchers have noted that students need help learning how to watch the videos and these researchers have developed a new way for students to learn how to watch MOOC videos called LectureScape. Read more.

EECS faculty member, Robert Berwick, principal investigator in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) has teamed with MIT Linguistics and Philosophy professor Shigeru Miyagawa to reinforce the thesis that human language development is based on bird song and other primates communication. Read more.